Sophia Allegre Gallatin

Sophia Allegre met Albert Gallatin while he was staying at her mother’s boarding house in Richmond, Virginia, during the mid-1780s. Against her mother’s wishes, Sophia married Albert on May 14, 1789. As they traveled to their wilderness home at Friendship Hill, Sophia wrote to her mother asking forgiveness and defending her choice to marry him. Five months later, Sophia fell ill and died at Friendship Hill. At her request, Albert buried her in an unmarked grave atop a hill overlooking the Monongahela River, and local tradition holds that a low stone wall in a wooded glen encloses her final grave.

Greensboro, Pennsylvania · United States